Project Management For Legacy Billing System Upgrade At IRTC Manufacturing Enterprises

Exploring the usage of Earned Value Management in IRTC Manufacturing Enterprises

This report depicts the importance of developing legacy billing system in a company named as IRTC Manufacturing Enterprise. However; the company already has a legacy billing system but in order to gain competitive advantages and measurable revenue they are willing to improve their existing system that has been originally installed 10 year ago. A team of 2 full time employees are employed to upgrade the billing system and the total time considered for this improvement is about 9-12 weeks. The aim of the company is to develop a new web based version for their employees to reduce cost, increase the overall working efficiency.

In order to accomplish the project within estimated time and budget the roles and responsibilities of the employees and project team members are required to be fulfilled accordingly (Brewer, Wallin & Ashenbaum, 2014).  The project manager is responsible to control and monitor the entire project during the initiation and even after the completion of the project. The roles of the project team members and their knowledge and skill set that are helpful to meet the requirement of the system are also elaborated in this report.  

1.1 Identification of the roles needing to be filled 

The aim of IRTC Manufacturing Enterprises is to provide a secured, efficient and effective solution by upgrading their existing legacy billing system to the consumers. It has been analyzed that, different components are there those are to be upgraded for improving the system (Hong & Kwon, 2012). In order to upgrade this system the roles those have been assigned are the business analyst, system developers, system tester, system analyzer, team leader and the business analysts. It is the responsibility of the project team leader to lead, guide and motivate the rest of the project team members (Kerzner, 2013). The roles needed to be fulfilled by the project team members are as follows:

Name of the appointed  person Save Time On Research and Writing Hire a Pro to Write You a 100% Plagiarism-Free Paper. Get My Paper	Roles	Responsibilities
Robin	Business analyst	The business analyst’s responsibility starts from the project starting and does not end up even after the execution of the project. The business analysts are responsible to extract, anticipate, constraints, organize the project requirements (Schwalbe, 2015). Not only this but also translation of the requirements, simplification, safeguard, verification and managing those requirements are also the responsibility of the business analysts.
Terry	End user	The end users are responsible to research, design, and develop the operating system level application and software details before the development of the system (Usman, Soomro & Brohi, 2014). They are also responsible to check all the necessary resources needed for the execution of the system. They should also prepare a status report for the testing activities and must interact positively with the consumers (Walker, et al., 2012). They should develop relevant test cases to carry out the regression testing.
Jan	Team leader	The team leaders are responsible to create such an environment where the consumers will be able to develop trust through open communication, creative thoughts and cohesive efforts from each team member (Rosemann & vom Brocke 2015). They are also responsible to handle the system oriented issues professionally by assisting the sales, job specification and clerical tasks.

1.2 Defining the skills required for each role 

Roles	Necessary skill
Business analyst	Ø Communication skill Ø Problem solving Ø Critical thinking Ø Facilitation and analysis skill Ø Elicitation skill Ø Skill on core Programming language Ø Logical and structural thinking Ø Detail analysis
End user	Ø Analytical and logical thinking Ø Business situation envision Ø Creativity and rational enquiry Ø Capability to apply the basic and fundamental knowledge on software system testing
Team leader	Ø Guidance Ø Mentor Ø Motivation Ø Communication Ø Listening skill Ø Self control Ø Assertiveness

1.3 Determining the skill sets of the team members 

For developing the new web based system for IRTC Manufacturing Enterprises, among pat, Terry, Robin, Chris and Jan three members are appointed to fulfill the task objective. Terry, Jan and Robin are appointed respectively for the posts of end user, team leader and business analyst. In order to develop the existing legacy billing system of IRTC Manufacturing Enterprises the skills set that the team members are required to possess are as follows:

1.1 Identification of the roles needing to be filled

Programming: While developing a new web-based system for IRTC Manufacturing Enterprises, one of the most important skills that the team leader and the rest of the project team members should possess is the programming skill (Yang, Huang & Hsu, 2014). For being a web developer knowledge regarding some programming language such as JavaScript, C, and C++ are necessary. Based on the requirement of the consumers the most effective language should be used for reducing the system complexity and to make it user focused (Heldman, 2015).   

Continuous learning: As technology is improving on a daily basis, thus the developers should have to be familiar with the day to day updates (Too & Weaver, 2014). Continuous learning approach helps the developer and tester to become innovative and technically stronger.

Test: Testing is referred to as a major part that is necessary for web development process.  However, this process is not bounded between coding and designing only but also it helps to define the extent contents before generating the final products (Ramasesh & Browning, 2014). The other skills that the team member should possess includes creativity, logical and analytical thinking. The tester should test each detail that has been created.

Basic design knowledge: The skills of the system developer, tester and the designer differ from each other. The skills of the designers are useful as well as helpful for developing their everyday working capability (Hunter, 2015). It helps to bring awareness development program. The designers must have minimum knowledge regarding the graphics designing to make the website more simple and creative at the same time. However, the designers must have proper knowledge and skills regarding graphic design tool.   

Resoluteness: Experiences can be gained from the previously mistakes and new trails. Except doubting the design the designers should possess the skills for making trial with new technologies.  

Communication:  Four different types of communication approaches are there those are generally widely used by the team leaders and the project development team members. It is the responsibility of the project manager to make the project team members connected to their job roles professionally (Awan & Saeed, 2015). The four different communication approaches include downward, upward, horizontal and open communication. However, the most effective communication approach that the team leader and the project team members should use is the open communication (Ramasesh & Browning, 2014). With the help of open communication the project team members will be able to share their point of thoughts with the team leaders.

1.2 Defining the skills required for each role

1.4 Assign team members to roles 

1.4.1 Candidate nominated

Based on the skills and knowledge of the team members, the responsibilities are divided and given to the team members.  For successful completion of the project Jan is nominated as the team leader.

1.4.2 Justification for the selection

From the analysis it has been found that, Jan is available to the project development for 16 hours per week with an investment of $115/hour. Though Jan is new in the IT application department but previously she was appointed as a consultant and professionally worked on a process reengineering project. That project deal with various billing functionalities as well. Not only this but also Jan has also worked with the web version products for the vendors competition. Thus, from her previous experience, skill and knowledge it can be said that she can be appointed for the role of team leader. As her previous projects were successful thus it can also be defined that she possesses professional communication skills, creativity and programming skill as well. The rest of the members are nominated as the project team members due to lack skill, knowledge. In addition to this, the other reasons those have been considered are their demand for salary and time as well.

1.4.3 Explanation on conflict or problem encountered

 Different types of organizational conflicts are there for which the organizational structures are negatively impacted. The different types of conflicts include interpersonal conflict, intrapersonal conflict, intra-group conflict and inter-group conflict (Awan & Saeed, 2015). During the development of the system different types of problems have been encountered. However; for this particular project the problems that has been encountered is the unclear responsibility.

In the project initiation phase the experience of the participants rather project team members were not at all clear thus, issues were highlighted on their interest domain (Joslin & Muller, 2015). As initially their domain of interest was not absolutely clear thus, it was very difficult to appoint them on the proper job role. On the other hand, due to their previous work experiences the demand of their salary and time availability was also very high. Considering the existing operational and functional availability it is also determined that, some of the interested participants are not even aware about the requirement of the company. Thus, during selecting the team for full time employees their skills, knowledge, learning ability and previous experiences are analyzed.

Conclusion 

From the overall discussion it can be concluded that, the goal of IRTC Manufacturing Enterprises is to explore the usage of the Earned Value Management system for monitoring and controlling the cost and schedule of the employee’s performance. It has been defined that based upon the skills and knowledge, the project team members should be appointed to their job roles. Not only this but also, for measuring the performance of the project team members Earned Value Management system act as a useful tool. In order to find out the variances of the project the project manager uses EVM as a systematic analysis tool. Even for project forecasting, cost and schedule control approach is used by the project managers. For reducing the work pressure from the project team members based on their skills and knowledge proper work division are also done that has been elaborated in this report. Three leading designations for this particular project are assigned as the end users, business analyst and team leader. The role of the team leader is to guide, motivate and control all the other project team members. In order to accomplish this particular project, the roles and responsibilities of the project team members are illustrated in this report 

References 

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Hunter, J. (2015). Work Analysis and the Resolution of Organizational Conflict: Theoretical Method, Measurement and Application. In Derailed Organizational Interventions for Stress and Well-Being (pp. 253-259). Springer Netherlands.

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Kerzner, H. (2013). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

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Rosemann, M., & vom Brocke, J. (2015). The six core elements of business process management. In Handbook on business process management 1 (pp. 105-122). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

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